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Wednesday
So, on Tuesday night, after our grueling flight down from Spokane to LAX, I stayed up. I watched on CSPAN Mrs. Michelle Obama give a speech at what I think must have been the University of Florida. Then came The Main Event: The President interviewed by David Letterman. It was a stunner.

First, when Mr. Obama came out, the crowd went wild. That's not surprising. The first question that Dave asked Mr. Obama was something like this: "You look great. How much do you weigh these days?"

Mr. Obama answered, as if the question were not insane, "About one eighty."

"Looks good on you," said Dave. "You carry it well."

The first question should have been, "Mister President, what on earth are you doing here? The Middle East is on the brink of war. Iran, the most dangerous nation on earth, is about to get a nuclear bomb. Why did you blow off talks to save the world from an Islamic bomb and the Mideast from war to appear on a comedy talk show?"

Of course, that was never asked.

Instead, we got a lot about Republican obstructionism in Congress and the greed of the Republican rich. (Mr. Letterman makes about $30 million a year.) After one particular sally, Dave actually asked, "Is this just the attitude of the country club rich?" or something like that. Well, duh. It takes one to know one, Dave. How dare you talk about "the rich" as if you were a peasant laborer in Sinkiang?

It was a spectacularly ass-kissing performance, but just about what I expected from Dave. However, Mr. Obama is so smooth, just so incredibly, unbelievably smooth, it just left me gasping.

At one point when Dave was fulminating against Republicans, Mr. Obama, who is about one hundred times smoother than anyone else running for President this year, said something like, "Look. I have been traveling all around this country. I meet a lot of Republicans. They're good, hard-working people."

This was genius. Why don't we have any geniuses (besides Karl Rove) on our side? It made Mr. Obama seem almost huggable for that instant.

But, more to the point, Mr. Obama, like his charming and very likeable wife, made a simple point that the Republicans just cannot seem to answer. He said, and she said, and they've been saying for months, something like this. "We want to help everyone get into the middle class and to be as successful as they can be. And when we make it to success, we want to help others to make it to success, too. That's not what the Republicans want."

That is nonsense on many counts.

First of all, Americans make it into the middle class not by entitlements, not by affirmative action except in a few cases, but by something that the Obamas rarely mention: extremely hard work and thrift.

We Republicans want everyone to succeed. We have had student loans, too. We had the GI Bill, too. But we recognize that there is no government program that can substitute for hard work. You cannot pass a bill to make everyone middle class. That takes work and thrift.

We are the party that believes in work. (We used to be the party that believed in thrift but that was a while ago.)

First of all Mooch and O Blowhard, if "everyone" was in the middle class, there would be only one class making any distinction moot. Second, one class of people is an argument for Communism. You do realize you are the leader of a Constitutional Republic don't you? Oh----MORON!

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.C. S. LewisDo not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives. (Are you listening Barry)?:mad:Ayn Rand

First of all Mooch and O Blowhard, if "everyone" was in the middle class, there would be only one class making any distinction moot. Second, one class of people is an argument for Communism. You do realize you are the leader of a Constitutional Republic don't you? Oh----MORON!

Yeah, that was pretty subtle, wasn't it? Not everyone -- and especially not many Democrats -- would pick up on that.